Mark Shiflett
University of Kansas, KS·Engineering
Air conditioners, heat pumps and refrigerators keep homes livable and food safe, but most still run on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). These refrigerant gases trap up to 4,000 times more heat than carbon dioxide when they leak.
- Fields
Engineering
Chemistry
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
refrigerants
hydrofluorocarbons
global warming potential
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Develop separation, conversion and reuse technologies that recover hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant blends instead of venting them, so waste refrigerant can be recycled.
- Identify safe, low-flammability, low-global-warming replacement refrigerants by running molecular simulations of candidate fluids and developing solid-state materials.
- Improve air-conditioning and refrigeration efficiency through new dehumidification materials, refrigerant-specific leak sensors, alternative refrigeration cycles and system modeling.
- Pair the technical work with life-cycle, cost and regulatory-impact analyses, and with studies of corporate and user behavior, to guide policy and industry adoption.
More about the research
Together with the energy these machines use, HFC leaks account for 7.8% of greenhouse-gas emissions. A U.S. law, the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, requires an 85% cut in HFC use over two decades. HFCs are hard to break down and hard to separate into their parts, so recycling them is difficult. Tighter rules have also created a market for illegal HFC imports.
Why it matters
Cooling and refrigeration are needed everywhere, yet their refrigerants are strong greenhouse gases. Better refrigerant recycling, safer low-impact replacement fluids, leak sensors and more efficient equipment could help U.S. manufacturers and regulators meet the AIM Act phasedown. The EPA links that phasedown to emission cuts of 4.6 billion tons of CO2 and to avoiding 0.5 °C of global warming. Data-informed regulatory guidance could also help curb illegal HFC imports.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
University of Kansas: 26 labs on PI Pages, $546M a year on research, 351 research doctorates a year.
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